9/11 Anniversary
In these days leading up to the tenth anniversary of the September 11 tragedy, I’ve revisited a book by the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams called Writing in the Dust. Dr. Williams was actually in New York that fateful morning, preparing to participate in a panel on spiritual direction at Trinity Church, Wall Street, just a few blocks from the World Trade Center. Because of its proximity to the towers, Trinity became an important rallying point for emergency responders, and in the weeks and months that followed, it became a sanctuary for those seeking comfort or relief from the devastating reality outside.
The day after the attacks, Dr. Williams was stopped in the street by a young man who turned out to be an airline pilot and a Catholic. He wanted to know what God was doing when the planes hit the towers. Williams struggled to respond with his normal eloquence.
“What do you say? The usual fumbling about how God doesn’t intervene, which sounds like a lame apology for some kind of ‘policy’ on God’s part, a policy exposed as heartless in the face of such suffering? Something about how God is there in the sacrificial work of the rescuers, in the risks they take? I tried saying bits of this, but there was no clearer answer than there ever is. Any really outrageous human action tests to the limit our careful theological principles about God’s refusal to interfere with created freedom” (7-8).
This is one of the things I’ve been chewing on recently. Because the truth is that barely a week passes without some comparable horror perpetrated by humans against one another. Thousands die every week from car bombs, suicide attacks, war and conflict-induced famine. Not to mention the tremendous manmade environmental catastrophes like oil spills or nuclear meltdowns. In the face of all these events, does our theology match up? Do we have the sort of relationship with God that can withstand a world gone awry? Are we prepared to accept the reality that God doesn’t casually step in to solve all of our problems, big and small? Are we prepared to trust a God who doesn’t intervene to halt every evil choice or action, but created a world in which evil must be confronted, suffered, and healed through the patient embodiment of love and prayer? Are we prepared to take responsibility for the ways in which we participate in the sin and suffering in this world, rather than just blaming it all on God?
Williams writes that the pilot was shaken by the thought that he “might be committed to a God who could seem useless in a crisis.” How many of us, sitting by the bedside of a loved one or staring at the television in disbelief at some new disaster, have thought something similar? The humbling, challenging truth is that God doesn’t always act according to our wishes. “My ways are not your ways, nor my thoughts your thoughts,” says the Lord through the prophet Isaiah. And though it is painful to accept at times, there is power in knowing that God does not cater to our, or any other agenda.
On this anniversary, there are no easy lessons or answers for us to glean. As Christians we should always be wary of those who seem to have easy answers to questions like these. Instead we turn to a God who, in ways far beyond our understanding, loves this broken and sinful world, and us, the broken and sinful people who poulate it. We don’t know how or why, we just believe it to be true. For now, that will have to be enough.
